Tommy Kane

Because I am Jewish, I am obsessed with anything resembling Jewish art, especially when the person drawing or painting Jewish imagery is not themselves Jewish. It’s just funny to me. I found this artist, Tommy Kane, after looking through a book I own, called An Illustrated Life. The author of that book, Danny Gregory, has a website and I was looking through it and found Tommy. Tommy is Irish and lives in New York. I would imagine that if you were from New York, Jewish people and Jewish likeness would constantly surround you. I am not sure exactly what kind of building is portrayed here, but it definitely has Hebrew letters at the top.

Besides enjoying the subject matter of Tommy’s illustrations (and not all of them are of Jewish buildings), I think the way he works with perspective is really interesting. He completely ignores straight lines, but still maintains a sense of vanishing points. The line weights are varied and the crosshatching seems meticulous. It almost makes it seem natural that the perspective is so off. I enjoy the colors being pretty neutral because I think they give another sense of normalcy to the otherwise trippy-looking image. The image kind of makes me want to throw my inhibitions to the wind and stop caring about straight lines in my work.